In 2020, international tourism could drop by 60-80 percent

Published on : Thursday, May 14, 2020

In 2020, international tourism could fall by 60-80 per cent because of the pandemic, resulting in the revenue loss of USD 910 billion to USD 1.2 trillion. It would eventually place millions of livelihoods at risk, the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) has said.

The global international agency has mentioned that the COVID-19 during the first quarter of 2020 has caused a 22 per cent drop in international tourist arrivals. As per the United Nations specialized agency, the global health crisis has a chance to lead to a drop in annual tourism between 60 per cent and 80 per cent when compared with the figures of last year.

As a result, millions of livelihoods are place at risk and terrorizes decreased progress in advancing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), it said.Today, the world is going through an unprecedented health and economic crisis. Tourism has been hit immensely, with job risks in one of the most labour-intensive sectors of the economy, UNWTO Secretary-General Zurab Pololikashvili said.

In the initial three months of 2020, available data reported by destinations points to a 22 per cent drop in arrivals, as per the recent UNWTO World Tourism Barometer.

In March 2020, arrivals declined sharply by 57 per cent following the lockdown in several countries of the world, along with extensive introduction of travel restrictions and airports and national borders closed down. This creates a loss of 67 million international arrivals and about USD 80 billion in receipts (exports from tourism).

Even though in relative and absolute terms (a decline of 33 million arrivals), Asia and the Pacific shows the highest impact, In Europe, the impact though was lower in percentage, is quite high in volume (-22 million), the agency confirmed.

Prospects for the year have been downgraded several times as the epidemic and uncertainty dominates.

For 2020, current scenarios highlights possible drop in arrivals of 58 per cent to 78 per cent. These depend on the speed of containment and the duration of travel restrictions and shutdown of borders.